


Almost Me

by Inscripsi



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Rewrite, Confessions, Denial of Feelings, Doppelganger, Drunken Confessions, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, New Context for Sole Survivor, Reluctant Feelings, Romance, Secrets, Synth Doppelganger, Synths, The Railroad (Fallout), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Widowed, post-war life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24204028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inscripsi/pseuds/Inscripsi
Summary: As evil as Deacon knows the Institute can be, it's unlikely they planted a cryogenically frozen version of his dead wife in a pre-war Vault. So he's accidentally stumbled across the woman they modeled Barbara to look like. Plus her dead, also frozen, husband. All he wants to do is file it away with his other lifelong trauma and forget that she exists, but when Nora bursts into the Commonwealth a few years later that isn't an option anymore.A shameless short-fic idea that wouldn't go away. Based on the Hozier song 'Almost' and the desire to create an even more emotionally tortured Deacon by having Barbara originally as a rejected mother-figure synth for a younger Shaun, modeled to look like the Sole Survivor.
Relationships: Deacon/Female Sole Survivor, Deacon/Sole Survivor (Fallout)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 67





	1. Chapter 1

The moment that Deacon discovers her in the shadowy chambers of the Vault is one of the most horrible he’s experienced in years. So mind-shatteringly terrible, in fact, that he genuinely believes he’s made it up to torture himself once he’s across the Vault and in a bathroom. It seems like the kind of fucked up trick his mind would play, perhaps his rad count had crept up too high without him noticing. It's easy enough for him to blame the tremor in his hands on the flickering light above and scavenge up a stale beer from the stores that no one was going to miss. Still, he places the empty beer bottle in a conspicuous place that would be expected of it and makes his meticulous way back through every room save for the back cryochamber. 

The data in the Vault terminals tells a sad story, not unlike what he’s heard of occurring in other Vaults dotting the wastes. Reluctantly, with a heart like lead, he moves back into the furthest recess of the Vault. There are other cryo-chambers, but this room holds the only active ones. He fiddles with the terminal at the front of the room, ignoring the fact that he went through it before he got spooked and bolted the last time. He pays extra attention to the lack of information crawling across the screen before darting down the aisle and looking at anything _but_ her pod. 

There is a story here he can’t see all of, he knows that much as he examines the man's terminal. Nathaniel Logan is dead, but still on ice. It’s curious to be certain, frost has crawled over his features, but it doesn’t hide the splatter of blood arching up from his shoulder. The dead man's eyes are closed and he lays slumped over to the side in the machine. After a few seconds too long of an examination he finally has to admit that there isn’t anything he can learn without cracking this sci-fi sarcophagus open. He debates it for a moment, but comes to the conclusion that he wouldn’t net enough information for him to defile the shoddy resting place. 

Finally he turns to face her again, but even he has to admit at that point that he’s being an absolute coward about it. Leave it to the Institute to play on impossible weak spots. The only living resident of Vault 111 is showcased behind the glass, her face contorted with the ghost of strong emotions and sprinkled over with frost. Unlike the others, there is no decay to her features even though a sustained life on ice gives her a ghostlier visage than anyone living he’s ever met. He clicks through the terminal, but without needing to bypass an administrative lock all he can get is her name. _Eleanor Logan_.

He decides against trying to hack the terminal, telling himself the Institute probably already knows he’s here. Still, Deacon can’t help but to look at her a few moments more. Thinking about it logically he knows that this woman, Eleanor, came before the bombs dropped. He knows that she was here first. But looking over those too-cold and pale features he can’t help but feel like the Institute resurrected the ghost of _his_ Barbara, just to spite him. 

He tells himself he’ll come back down after some time has passed. Maybe to take a crack at grabbing the fancy gun they locked away, or waking up Sleeping Beauty to interrogate. But he’s an old hat at this, and Deacon knows when he’s lying to himself. He’ll keep an eye on it now that he knows beyond any shadow of doubt that the Institute was here, but Deacon expects that he wouldn’t come back into Vault 111 willingly if the radstorm of the ages was upon him.

* * *

She bursts out into the Wasteland, whether or not he’s ready to face her, almost two years later. He hears about it by way of Tinker after blowing back in from a short stint in Goodneighbor. Tink whispers it conspiratorially because he knows Des will lecture him about bringing up aliens so close to the last lab incident, and Deacon heavily insinuated that the Vault needed to be monitored for alien activity. 

Deacon had hoped his paranoia of her one day emerging would stay irrational. He slinks out of the Switchboard too early the next morning to chafe the brass. Tommy gives him a look, but lets him go with no further commentary than a two-finger salute. 

It’s almost a week before Deacon manages to track his ghost down, despite the intel and her proximity. He spends some of that time doing his actual job, knowing if he goes back empty-handed then his disappearance will land him on probation with Carrington- if not Maven or Des. The other days are spent stalling, terrified of the consequences of her being _real_. He’s half convinced by the time he stumbles across her, that she’s a Institute plant specifically designed to hunt him down and torture him for information. He’s never managed to create falsehoods enough to escape the memory of Barbara. Even in his head. 

In truth, even if he could reach and sustain those Tinker Tom depths of suspicion, it would require too much work. The other explanations he’s thought up in the twenty-odd months since he came across the vault make much more sense. He knows she’s likely some kind of Institute asset, but it would take too much effort to fabricate everything pre-War he found. The only question was why the fuck she was suddenly active now.

Additionally, Sanctuary had become a blip on the map overnight, a mental note he filed away for later. She’d been through and left her mark- from what he can tell without direct interaction. A flickering light by the campfire and a few drinks let the newly settled settlers talk openly about their recent companion, though Deacon senses that she kept sparse with the details from how mundane they make her rescue sound. He bugs out after the kid with the hat starts divvying up chores before wandering off to patrol again. 

What he doesn’t anticipate is that Eleanor hasn’t actually made it very far. She’s camped out in the Red Rocket just a stone’s throw away, curled up haphazardly with a wounded dog. They’re both bandaged up and sharing a half-shredded sleeping bag, and it’s easier for him to handle looking at her while her face is mostly buried in its fur. 

The dog doesn’t move much at his presence, save a few lethargic sniffs. As much as he wishes he could compliment his sneaking skills, the extent of bandage coverage on the canine indicates that this is more likely due to some sort of medicinal sedation. A duffel bag lay half open in the corner of the room, and Deacon quells his irrational guilt with wastelander rationalizing. She just left it out in the open. Obviously the ghost didn’t have grips on the post-war side of life yet. 

The few things he finds, however, are of little interest to him as they only elaborate on what little he already knows. Though he confirms that she cracked open her husband's cryo-casket to take his ring. A worn and faded picture of the family shows the baby that was missing from the vault, too young to sport many features of the family, but dusted by Barb- _Eleanor's_ bright blonde locks. The masochistic whisper in the back of his mind speaks up, _At least Barb had a kid in spirit._ He sets down the picture of the happy-family-no-more and abandons the too-nosy duffel bag search. It’s not like he needs her pocket knife or spare clothes. 

Instead it’s the Pip-Boy around her wrist that draws his eye, a gem of Vault 111 that he must have missed in the aftershock of his discovery. He doesn’t dare poke through it while it’s still attached to her, but he approaches despite himself. She has shifted in her sleep though, and Deacon is run through again with a lance of emotion he has no faculties to process once her face is suddenly visible to him. This time there is no barrier of ghostly frost, and her expression is one of rest, if not peace. But most importantly she’s breathing, unharmed, _pristine_. 

He was right, despite the lies he’s fed himself in regards to the episode of cowardice he experienced in the Vault. The woman laying asleep before him is the spitting fucking ( _intact_ ) image of Barbara, possibly with a few years on her. It's hard to tell how much of that is early adjustment to wasteland life and grime. Deacon feels certain she’d gotten a crash course over the past week. 

He stares for a moment before his brain locks onto exactly what it is he’s doing, and how it would look if her or the canine woke from their haze. At war with himself about the reality of the situation, he debates briefly if he should take something to convince himself later that this happened. Stopping himself before the urge gets out of hand, Deacon stalks quietly back out into the night and makes for Concord and the emptiness he needs to think. His thimble-sized cup of genuine emotion has runneth-the-fuck-over for the evening and he burns through roughly six cigarettes before daybreak. 

Distance and deceit have been his modus operandi for damn near a decade, and he’s not about to change that for a goddamn doppelganger. But he’ll be damned if he can handle seeing any visage of Barbara get hurt again. He tells himself that it’s an obscure form of justice, and that he can walk the line. It would be inappropriate to get attached. If they’re lies that he’s telling himself, then Deacon is too far gone to tell the difference. 

* * *

He keeps tabs on her movements, but avoids doing anything outright involving himself. At least until he meets her for the first time. Vault Dwellers are surprisingly easy to keep tabs on, especially given the recent stalemate of suspicion encompassing the Commonwealth. Their encounter is an accident, much like his initial discovery of her existence, but this time she’s the one who stumbles upon him. 

The dog may not have been awake, but something about Deacon must register because Dogmeat (whose name he learns later) is instantly intrigued. He’s done up in his usual guard outfit to try and witness a classic McDonough meltdown in the making. Since the Combat Zone became a raider exclusive establishment he’s been thirsting for _some_ kind of theater. He gets his meltdown, but the amusement of it flash freezes halfway through the performance as he gets a proper look at Piper’s companion. It’s not just any Vaultie that she’s calling Blue.

His heart rate leaps up as though he’d entered combat with a Deathclaw, and he never hoped to blend in more seamlessly than in that moment. But she brought Dogmeat, who seems a decent enough sort for a wasteland dog, though Deacon is close to outright running away at this point. Opinions of the other guards be damned. Then the bickering dies down with a quiet word from _her_ and suddenly Deacon realizes he’s too late and the best thing he can do is act nonchalant. 

Dogmeat lets out a decidedly cheerful yip at him and he’d be charmed if he weren’t feeling so panicked at the dog unwittingly betraying him. Until he interacted with her in that moment, everything else could have been chalked up to the bizarre nature of the Institute. But then her low, calm voice slips out where he can hear it and he doubts that full combat could bring him close to the way his heart is pummeling in his chest. Deacon, who prides himself on sardonic distance, falters in her wake. 

“Dogmeat, let the man work in peace,” she murmurs, bending down and patting the mutts haunch. She looks up at Deacon then, unknowingly instilling cardiac arrest, and gives him a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. He still sees them though, and despite the haziness she regards him with, Deacon balks at the blue of them. She is Barbara reincarnate. _Because she is the original_ , whispers the malicious voice in the back of his head. Deacon is suddenly doubly thankful for the shield of his sunglasses, because he has no idea what his eyes would betray of him. Realizing that the silence has lapsed into territory that could be considered awkward pushes him to speak up. 

“It’s no trouble,” he says back, leaning down to scratch the shepherd's head. He makes eye contact with the dog and a huff of laughter escapes him at the dogs all-too-pleased face. He speaks to Dogmeat directly, asking, “What a day, huh?”

The pup gives a soft bark in reply, licking his hand before being drawn back to its mistress as she stands and adjusts her pack to move into the city proper. She nods to him in parting, another brief pull of her lips toward a smirk, and then pats her thigh for Dogmeat to follow. They part ways with her none the wiser for it, but he’s never felt so irrationally jealous of an animal of the Wastes. 

* * *

The stalemate ruptures a few weeks later, a dark red in his memory like the shattering of a vintage Merlot. So he forgets her for a few days, while dealing with his more vibrant shades of fresh grief and betrayal. They're old acquaintances at this point, but he has never settled well with being in their company. The Switchboard falls and nearly takes the whole damn operation down with it. _Too comfortable_ , he thinks to himself, but it is a thought he knows they all are familiar with in the aftermath. 

He’s bumped up in the hierarchy, too close to the top to be comfortable. Everyone left just seems too green or too essential for his tastes, and there's a pressing concern of _shouldn’t there be more of us?_ But he’s never one to lose himself in a crisis, if only because he has so many layers of himself that he can be. He cracks the first joke in the dust of the crypt a week after it all goes down, and though he is met with scowls, the atmosphere finally becomes semi-bearable afterward. 

Wariness chokes them afterward, makes them stagnant with inaction as they desperately recuperate. With so few feet on the ground they all stay immensely busy with what work there is, despite the grinding halt that all of their larger action has taken. Deacon finds his mind wandering to her a few weeks later, but his information network isn’t where it was in the months before. Being unable to follow up is for the best, he tells himself. It probably wasn’t his healthiest ongoing obsession, even if he feels more disappointed than he should.

Wasteland destiny loves to fuck with him though, and their obscure recruitment drive manages to ensnare her interest apparently. When they get word from a tourist that a Vault girl is drumming up for information on them, he’s not the only one to jump into high alert. He’s quick enough to take the case, and just like that she’s back on his radar. 

She’s made friends with a decent lot by now, he finds out, but never traded out her vault blues. It helps that his justification for following her personally feels a little less hollow, knowing she’s interested in the Railroad now. Still, he gets his intel on her and gets out. Word around Goodneighbor is that she’s seeking out the Institute on her own, and she’s a presumed helper-for-hire in the great Green Jewel. There is a lot of gossip surrounding her once he knows what to ask, but most of it lay in speculation or her now well-known revival of the near-extinct Minutemen. 

He tries not to dwell too much on what light any of it paints her in. The Switchboard has reinforced that he needs to be guarded, and he’s the only one in the Railroad who is aware of her potential Institute connection through Vault 111. But when he talks with Desdemona, he finds himself silently hoping it isn’t the wrong call to make when he leaves it out of the report. If he’s being honest with himself, he never expected her to put forth the effort it would take to find them. 

* * *

It’s a hair after midnight when HQ takes on a noticeable edge, but he’s too sleep deprived from his most recent trip to give much of a shit. Tinker whispers hurriedly to Des, and then her and Glory make their way to the church entrance. _Ghouls getting feisty with the wiring_ , he thinks to himself half asleep. But Drummer Boy’s quiet footsteps pad past his mattress to a desk, and the runner grabs his pistol before heading in that same direction. As much as his exhausted brain wills him to dismiss it, Deacon pops up to follow within minutes. 

Eleanor awaits them in the entrance, washed out in the spotlights of their security system and surrounded from the front by the greeting crew. They all look less than pleased at how this particular arrival has gone down, but Deacon instantly jumps into survival mode. A few smooth words manages to ease the tension, and a reference of who she was to Des pushes it into downright sociable territory considering their usual vetting process. New blood needs to prove they can pull their weight, even with a recommendation from a _senior_ member. Deacon tries not to outwardly cringe as Des indicates him. 

A mission is discussed, information alluded to, and Deacon can’t help but stare at his newcomer as she speaks with Desdemona directly. Straight to the point and obviously aware of who calls the shots among them, she spares a glance or two at Deacon, but has no eyes or concern for the firing squad before her. Deacon, in all his shock, only half listens. When he puts together what it is they're sending her ( _t_ _hem_ ) to do, he wishes he’d stepped up to fight any number of debatable orders before now. Something to give him the weight in an argument against _this_. 

But it’s over before he can formulate the anger into pointed derision, and ends with him being thrown to the wolves. Or rather, one wolf. His ghost. She stares at him as he approaches, and though he feels like a man sent to the gallows, he tries to mask it with his typical attempts at swagger. And suddenly she’s right there, close enough to be _Barbara_ and not Eleanor of the Vault, and he feels like maybe he never actually got up and he's just been sleeping off how hard he's been pushing himself. It's fucked up fever dream material if he's ever had any. 

They talk up the basics, where to meet and when, but his mouth is dry and the only joke he tries falls flat. He even pulls the unthinkable and drops her given cover name ( _Wanderer_ ) because his brain starts to fracture at having to divvy her identity into thirds. To her credit, she doesn't ask how he knows of her, or her full name, she just subtly corrects him before they part ways, “It's just Nora. No one's called me Eleanor, other than teachers, since my mother died.” 

The conversation doesn't flow easily, but neither of them seem to care. She fiddles with the pip-boy on her wrist before confirming the rendezvous. The last thing she asks is an afterthought, “Do you mind dogs, Deacon?” 

It's the first time she's said his name, the wrong name, and he feels a pang of some deep despondency in his chest. He shrugs, “I don't mind ‘em. But since my stealth boy collar attachment is still patent pending, no canine is really capable of matching my stealth in the field.” 

He feels like a loser the moment the words are out of his mouth, but for the first time something kind of genuine flits across her features. He has years of experience reading that face, though he’s likely rusty. It's not quite a chuckle that follows, but her huff of amusement is in the same ballpark. His internal reaction is far from anything rational, healthy, or sane. Externally he just pulls a smirk before parting ways with a Tommy Whispers two-finger salute.


	2. Chapter 2

The entire goddamn mission is a waking nightmare for Deacon. He remains fairly impersonal towards her, though she seems to forgive it for the most part. It helps that Nora really only seems to speak when spoken to, at least until she warms up to somebody. And if they keep wading these tepid social waters then Deacon feels certain that this partnership will remain relatively mechanical and awkward throughout. The silver lining of the whole operation is that he finds the mechanical aspect allows the two of them to be efficient as hell. 

Their quiet and complementary skill sets lend themselves to the task at hand, namely eliminating synths without putting up the red alert. While Deacon has kept rough tabs on Nora since she emerged a few months prior, he finds that information is quite different than a witnessing of action. Her grasp of electronics is solidly beyond that of his own, which nets them numerous advantages, though she gladly lets him take point on any ranged combat. This steady rhythm carries them through in a sort of unspoken dialogue of its own.

When it’s all over they stand in the ruined Slocum’s, taking potshots at the minefield to clear a path out. Hours have passed since they entered the facility and daybreak threatens the horizon, but the only noise is their occasional explosion. It’s that morning, covered in a thin layer of sweat and dust and paced by a slow volley of gunfire, that Deacon realizes he wants to _know_ Nora.

They part ways to avoid drawing attention when they vacate, and it gives him time to think before they meet back at headquarters. It gives him some space but it doubles as a test because she’s the one holding onto Carrington’s stupid device. He finds somewhere along the way back he can be by himself and, while it isn’t much, he lights a cigarette and thinks back on all the dead he had to face the night before. When he eventually slinks back into HQ, still half-mourning, it’s not an easy story to share with the others. 

Before he has time to sit with himself for too long, Nora rolls back in and has suddenly earned a place in the pecking order. He helped it along, of course, but he’s tired of trying to think through how much of an eye to keep on her. Rational or not, the conclusion he keeps coming to is to have her close at hand. She sought out the Railroad personally, and he knew because of where ( _when_ ) she came from that eventually the Institute would get involved. The details, his feelings, all the risks involved, didn’t matter in light of that. 

Nora accepts his initial offer of companionship, and so begins a span of productivity about the Commonwealth that Deacon has rarely witnessed, let alone taken part in. She drags him through north Boston with a fervor, and they make quick work in the night of most hostiles. At some point in the first week, she takes to wearing a hat, and he tells himself that it helps set her apart in his mind. Eventually, the hesitance around ‘Nora’ dims in his mind. Their unspoken dialogue takes them into territory that borders on camaraderie. 

It helps him understand what it is they’re doing as he learns about her. For whatever reason, Nora came out of that Vault as an idealist, bent on shaping some aspect of the wasteland into something good. As the face of the Minutemen, she paints a bright target on herself to try and connect people in a meaningful way. She’s also made friends with Hancock and Valentine, both of whom are helping her chase the ghosts of the Institute for her son. It’s not a subject she brings up with Deacon, and he chooses not to push it the other way. 

Aside from the numerous hauls of scrapping that make his legs ache, he has to admit that he approves of the effort. The voice in him that remains restless and weary from experience just hopes they're out of the picture when it all inevitably falls to pieces. 

* * *

It’s not until a few months have passed him by, a jumble of time spent both in and out of her company, that they form more of a connection. He’s comfortable enough around her by then, but they typically orbit within a respectful distance of the others barely-below-surface level anguish. He doesn’t ask about her past or the son he’s not supposed to know about and she shies away from pressing him for the truth. At the very least she chooses not to call him out on the lies. 

The tone she carries with her has shifted in recent weeks, and he’s put together that Nora's close to something big from all the nervous energy she puts off. While she hasn't spent much time loitering around headquarters, the last time he bought MacCready a drink he murmured something begrudgingly about the Glowing Sea. Judging from her haphazard state of being, Deacon didn’t think she’d stopped to rest much since her initial trek out. Before he can break their implied rule about asking questions, a crack rings out through the ruins of downtown Boston and she drops like a rock twenty paces ahead. 

It's mutant territory, and while he's outnumbered, they're stupid. He vanishes via Stealth Boy and they leave well enough alone, but Nora still doesn't move. He crawls his way through the wreckage as cautiously and quickly as he can, but they’re far enough off from the encampment of Super Mutants that the Master who’s sniper shot hit her hasn’t bothered to come to investigate. It’s not a direct shot anywhere vital, but it managed to clip through her collarbone through the adjacent armor and is bleeding freely. He says a silent thank you that she opted not to bring Dogmeat along on this adventure, he’d hate to have to deal with the added pressure of the dog and Nora bleeding out. 

Cautiously he stimpaks the base of her neck and helps haul her into the ruins to the north of where she dropped, keeping a rough idea of her vitals. She was semi-conscious through his mildly panicked rescue, but as he gets them burrowed into an old dilapidated office space Nora nods off into an uneasy sleep. It’s not until he has them barricaded behind two layers of furniture that he stops and considers the fact that he’s _shaking_ and _covered in her blood_. 

A cig or three later Deacon finally approaches the wounded and resting Nora to take stock. She’s pale and breathing shallowly, but he’s just focused on the fact that she’s _breathing_. He hesitantly sits near her makeshift pallet on the floor, leaning over her to check the wound and take stock of her. The once long mane of untamed lawyer bun had been lopped off at the earliest convenience and tucked into a bandana during the summer months. The direct sunlight has caused freckles to blossom across her cheeks and neck that the Institute had apparently failed to incorporate, alongside a smattering of scars that Barbara had neglected to earn in her time with the wastes. 

It strikes him how much he’s come to be able to see Nora as her own variation of herself. The thought feels cheap as he thinks it though- because she doesn’t know and can’t ask what, or rather _whom_ , it is that he struggles to separate her from. That night her skin remains clammy to the touch and the wound puckered, red, and inflamed. His moral compass wrestles back and forth about dosing her with any chems the way he would a RadAway and it’s still up for debate when she shivers. With a start Deacon realizes that he’s still sitting next to her, holding her bare neck. In her sleep, she whimpers with a longing that shatters his heart, “Nate…”

The rest of the evening she stays relatively still, though he remains on the other side of the room. There is an ache that tugs at him when he lingers too close to how familiar Nora’s longing had sounded- or the lance of guilt that her husband’s name had drawn from him. He knows he’s been compromised, that he probably was from before this all started. But for the first time in a long time, Deacon can’t force himself to run. 

* * *

The next morning it’s Nora that wakes him up with the rustle of a bag of Crisps, loud in the quiet morning-damp office air despite the deteriorated condition. She has enough shame and energy to look sheepish, but it pulls into a smirk that begs forgiveness as she offers him some. Pulling himself more firmly into consciousness, Deacon rubs from the sleep-sore divots from his glasses as he nabs a few chips out of the bag and waves her arm away. 

The sound of them munching is made awkward when she breaks the silence between them in a rare breach of their unspoken rules, “You can take them off when you sleep, y’know. I won’t look... or steal your glasses.”

It starts off on a more confident note than it ends, but she doesn’t shy away from the offer that she’s extended or the expectation of comfort it requires of him. It falls into a silent moment that borders on awkward before he gives a tired chuckle and murmurs a sleep-dry, “I know, boss.”

He doesn’t call her boss very often, though he’s always been a fan of cheeky respect he can’t trust the weight of heavy ‘B’s around her. It lands the way he meant for it to, he thinks, because she gives a small smile and looks right at him. Her gaze is brief, but she offers the bag for him to snack from again as she pulls her gaze away. The rest of the morning is spent companionably quiet, but Deacon can feel a faint charge to the air between them. 

* * *

It’s a few days shy of a month later when the truth about her family and life before the war tumbles out from her, filling in the few gaps of his knowledge that remained after digging through the dirt of her past. They’re both far drunker than they ought to be- in the wasteland or around each other- and Deacon is caught in between self-loathing and inebriated joy at Nora’s proximity. 

It’s the middle of the night and they’re holed up in Bunker Hill, downstairs the Savoldi’s still entertain the drunken caravan wedding that the two of them had gotten tangled into. Deacon had managed to talk up a safe spot for a synth or two in their guard rotation, so it hadn’t all been selfish abandon, but it was easy to lean into the justification. Now they were here, painfully intimate and wrapped in the moment by their focus on the other. Without the usual walls up he couldn’t stop himself from stroking her hair as she confessed her life story, and she didn’t hide the fact that she leaned into it. 

When it’s all out in the open and they lay loosely tangled in each other, clothed and pretending the situation is as innocent as they’d like it to be, she asks, “How much did you know?”

It’s hard for him not to deliver the lie that he knows Nora expects. Deacon sighs, “More than I should’ve.” 

It’s barely the truth, and it doesn’t come close to making him feel okay about what’s unspoken between them, but she curls into him in response. The lines that he’s set for himself blur in the half-light of the open-air room and he pulls her against him as gently as he can in this newfound desperation. They make no other moves, seemingly aware of how difficult this moment is for both of them, they just lay in the loose embrace as they both drift off- still dizzy and drunk. 

* * *

The next morning it’s raining softly, and so in the humid morning air he tells her about Barbara and the Deathclaws. Not her correlation to them- because that’s a topic he isn’t sure he can broach without seeming insane- but their existence in his life before. Everything between them feels fresh, but Deacon’s heart aches from how many of his own rules were broken by his stubbornness last night. Nora still seems to think the best of him despite his intractable past behavior, but seems to know the ghosts of their respective spouses stand between them for the moment. He isn’t sure how much longer he can keep treading these dangerous waters before he admits to himself that it’s gotten out of hand. 

It’s with great insistence that he pushes Nora into the all-too-skilled hands and care of Hancock to try and shake both of them from the others' system. The jealousy that eats away corrosively at the back of his mind is supplanted with the knowledge that _anything_ is better for her in the long run than too close an attachment to him. No use retreading the same mistakes. But there was a pervasive sense of needing to address his own blind spots in this mess of emotion, a glimmer of remaining self preservation that drove him to seek council in the unsuspecting. 

It’s this drive that takes him back into the Great Green Jewel during the dewy morning trader traffic, seeking out the soft glowing neon of Valentine’s agency. To his credit, the gruff synth doesn’t seem upset to have Deacon suddenly darkening his doorstep, he simply raises an eyebrow and opens the door and stands to the side to let him in. 

After making himself at home with the synth’s meager supplies he directs Nick to thank Ellie for making him remotely approachable, but the detective just raises an eyebrow at him. After a few minutes of trying to talk about the problem at hand without directly talking about _her_ , Deacon’s rambling is cut off by an exasperated Nick. 

“I knew it was going to be bad when she started talking up the Railroad the same way you do, Deacon. That girl has more room for lost causes than she knows what to do with. Now why don’t you get around to why you’re actually here.”

He didn’t need to be told twice, the synth was the only person that Deacon felt might handle the situation with the right gravity. Nick had been told Nora’s story rightfully, by her, long before she even knew of Deacon. Even if his stolen glimpses of the truth had given more of the picture than he had any right to, it wasn’t a piece of her that she wanted him to know, until the other night. Nick, for his part, shuts up once Deacon gets around to the point of his visit.

“I can’t say that I’d have recommended you get this close to Nora if she really is so uncanny a ringer for your Barbara,” Nick says after Deacon winds down from the explanation. Deacon gives him a rare deadpan look from over the rim of his sunglasses, but holds his tongue from the snarky comment it aches to let free.

“Well I’m sorry you don’t want to be told the obvious, but you’re unnecessarily exposing yourself to nearly constant trauma with her. When Nora finds out what being near her is like for you, she’s going to be devastated.”

Deacon nods, it’s an angle he’s tried to consider- given the woman’s capacity for compassion and burdening herself with other people’s problems. Slowly, he verbally approaches the issue his brain is pushing him to address with this tell-all visit, “That’s just it, Nick. None of this is her fault, I’ve put myself this close to her without saying a damn thing. But if anyone can break their way into the Institute, it’s Nora. There’s every chance she’ll find some alternate version of herself there with her son, and I’ll have said nothing. I can’t let her find out like that. If they’ve been keeping any kind of tabs on her, there’s a chance they could piece together who I was and use that against her.”

Nick pats Deacon’s shoulder, “You’re asking me to tell you something you’re practically screaming at yourself, Deacon. You’ve got to bring this up before she gets done with her farewell tour of the Commonwealth. She’s found a way in Deacon- they’re polishing the finer details in Sanctuary.”

It’s a truth that shouldn’t shock him, but something akin to shock fizzles through him with the realization of what the last few weeks of her erratic behavior have been building up to. Something in him tempers the panic that he’d induced himself with in their closeness a few days before. Realizing that she’s been trying to make things right before saying probable goodbyes, it rips open a new wound in him while cauterizing it in the same motion. Suddenly her hushed conversations with Tinker make more sense with the added context, a brittle stalemate of information between Nora and Desdemona that precluded her lingering in HQ for more than half an hour. 

Deacon is on his feet and pacing when he becomes aware of his surroundings from out of his swirl of thoughts, a look somewhere between concern and amusement on Nick’s face as he watches. He musses the hair of his wig in something his body means to resemble a motion of resolve, but the voice that comes out of him is wan and questioning, “I have to go talk to her.”

Nick is then suddenly left alone to ruminate on the events of the morning, before the noonday sun has even started to leech the morning dew from the rooftops of the pitch. He sits for a little while with his thoughts and the new knowledge that Deacon’s visit has brought about the agent’s background. Uncertain how to feel about his morning with the serial liar, Nick settles on pity for the pair of them, mindlessly cleaning up before Ellie can sweep in and pester him about leaving a mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this one holds up in its reading style. I picked this story back up after setting it down for a while near the end of the last chapter. I'm glad to be continuing it, I had liked the idea, but it can be hard to go back and make sure tone matches. Thank you for the feedback from last time.


	3. Chapter 3

Responsibility for Nora seems to have been transferred over to MacCready by the time Deacon makes it back into Goodneighbor. Hancock is part of his greeting committee at the gates of the town, apparently tapped in for mayoral duty over a gang of raiders too daring in their feints and approaches. The ghoul gives him a once over before pulling a knowing smirk and gesturing Deacon further into the settlement. Gunfire picks up in the streets beyond the gate and he’s forced further into the cordoned off safety before he can inquire further into Hancock’s insinuation. 

It’s not terribly surprising to find Nora and her ex-Gunner holed up in the Third Rail, but the surprisingly intimate conversation that he almost shoves his foot into is. He’s able to catch himself before either of the others do, but it leaves him to take up perch at the bar and watch awkwardly. Whitechapel Charlie harasses him a bit for the tab he’d left the last time he blew through Goodneighbor lacking a disguise, but a few caps and some polite inference leaves Deacon alone with his thoughts. 

He’s neck-deep on his second beer when Nora slides into the stool next to him and gestures at his beer to Charlie, “I’ll have one too.”

Deacon feels a small smile press through as she struggles for a solid few seconds with straightening out the strap of her duffel bag. She wraps that venture up (unfinished) as MacCready slides a startling arm around her midsection from behind, pulling her into a brief and surprising farewell hug. The merc makes an exaggerated kissing noise against her forehead and Deacon sees the red ringing his eyes that evidences the recent tears spilled. Nora’s shriek of surprise dissolves into semi-contagious laughter, she kisses the merc’s cheek back just as noisily, blubbering out a, “You dolt, you’re making a scene!”

For his part, Deacon isn’t really taken off guard by any of it, but he’s left the awkward man out again as a second round of goodbyes sprout from MacCready’s poorly disguised emotional outburst. The merc gives Deacon a wink as he moves to leave, and trails off with a slightly tight, “Keep an eye on the Boss.” 

The exit leaves them briefly uncertain and awkward in the sudden emptiness. Nora gives the first reply, more polite than he expects or deserves, “After you insisted I take a breather in Goodneighbor, I assumed you’d made a guess at my game. That you were angry at me. It felt like taking off after our little heart-to-heart was the closest you could come to punishing me… What are you doing back here, Deacon?”

“You give me too much credit, Nora. I had to have your stunt spelled out to me because you think I’m capable of processing _subtext_ when it comes to you.” 

Deacon doesn’t imagine the glint of interest that his phrasing lights in her eyes, but he squashes the equally eager part of himself that rises up like hope in response. Her chuckle is low and dangerous, “What about _me_ keeps the Commonwealth’s greatest spy from handling some measly subtext?”

He definitely isn’t imagining the flirtation, but he’s about to counter into something suave (and manageable) when Nora bites her lower lip on her left side. Suddenly the double image of Barbara doing the same thing two decades prior wells up in a nauseating double-image, unbidden feelings unlocked by the ghost of this long-buried memory of his dead wife. 

It’s very un-suave when Deacon whispers, throat hoarse with sudden grief, “The truth.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and the sudden tone change leaves them in the silence of Charlie's engine whirring again. Nora looks back and forth at their drinks before pushing herself up and snagging the bottles off of the table, “Tell Hancock I’ll meet him later tonight Charlie, I’m going to go back to my room at the Rexford if he needs me.”

“Of _course_ , mum,” the Mr. Handy clips back as sardonically as his sensors will allow. A smattering of cuss words could be picked from the low muttering of the robot, but the message would assuredly make it back to Hancock. 

Deacon looks over at Nora, his expression one of guarded questioning. She holds out his notably emptier bottle of beer, jostling it in a manner that is supposed to be tempting, “Come on, you sound like you’ve got more to unload.”

_What an understatement._ He snags the bottle back, downing it before following. 

* * *

“‘ _Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed_ ,’” Deacon quotes, sitting down. Having been left to his thoughts as they picked their way towards the Rexford and then through it to Nora’s room, he’d settled on a quote of dramatic penchant where his own words failed. His heart wasn’t in it all the way, though, and the words came out fragile and strained to his own ears. 

Nora, for her part, managed to keep the concern off of her face, pulling a small smirk as she replied, “What is that… is that Tolstoy? Where the hell did you manage to dig up an intact brick of his?” 

Immediately she moves to work at the small table, pulling apart her 10mm and going about the business of listening to him without putting the spotlight on him. It only serves to reinforce the powerful appreciation of her that seemingly pulses alongside his heartbeat nowadays. Deacon studied her briefly in the hotel’s dim lighting before continuing, “You’d be amazed at how many bunkers I’ve cracked in my life Nora- or the strange things they’ve had hidden away inside them.”

It takes a beat, but Nora stops working and her eyes slowly slide across the room to him, and his heart jumps to his throat as she seems to make eye contact despite his glasses.

A quiet acknowledgment settles between them, though she breaks it by murmuring, “I knew it,” to the silent room a minute later. Deacon tries not to let the anxiety swallow him, but the truths of his life is something he has tried to compartmentalize away for over a decade. Baring it to Nora is a kind of vulnerability that he’s seen others killed for. One that, in a way, he’s seen a version of _her_ killed for. 

“You need to understand the truth of why I found you- before you go take this fight to the Institute. I… I can’t have you go in blind.” There’s more he wants to add to the statement, but he can’t quite get his tongue to cooperate with the truth he’s trying to give up.   
  


“I told you about my wife, Barbara. Losing her changed me, leading me to be anyone but who I was. Like the broken liar you put up with nowadays. What I neglected to mention was the reason you were on my radar in the first place: because you’re the spitting image of her. Or, rather, Barbara had been modeled to be the spitting image of you.”

Nora, who nodded through his introductory sentence, stilled as Deacon continued through his confession. Before the silence could leak in again, she spoke up, “So your… wife… looked exactly like me? That… that would suggest they made… synth replicas of me.”

Deacon nodded, “Possibly plural, though I’m not versed enough in the numbers to give you the likelihood of that. We’ve received a fair amount of intel, but I’ve never seen two explicit copies of someone when they weren’t being used for infiltration purposes. And I’ve certainly never run into anyone, other than Barbara, that looked remotely close to you.”

The silence seeped back in as Nora processed what he’d just laid out. After a few moments of pause, she stood up to rummage through her bags. A tattered moleskin journal surfaced and was set on the threadbare bed, alongside a pack of cigarettes- also rummaged from a hidden pocket of her duffel. The journal was well-loved, stuffed with all of Nora’s notes as well as what appeared to be some old photos. She moved with an invisible purpose, scouring through the notes for some information that Deacon’s reveal has triggered an interest in.

After dog-earring some four or five pages, she cast Deacon a long look before finally giving him a reply, “Well, you’ve helped me to make sense of at least a few… odd interactions. Never would have guessed they led back to you. I couldn’t have known who they referred to, even if I’d been given more detail. I guess a few older, or ghoul, wastelanders remembered seeing Barbara at some point in the past… Mostly it was all speculation on past relatives of mine.” 

He thinks on that for a moment, not used to the idea that the memory of Barbara could still live on for anyone, except in his tortured memories. She _had_ been striking, even after her years in the wastes. Kindness had also been one of her most noted traits, despite the unwelcome attention it occasionally brought her. He supposed it was the selfishness inherent in how he chose to reflect on Barbara- forgetting that most people wouldn’t have been so shattered from her loss that they needed to hide from it. It was certainly plausible that one of the veteran merchants or caravan guards recalled the familiarity of Nora’s features and had made a passing comment. 

In his reflection, Nora had pulled out a dull and grimy pencil and made notes near the later half of the notebook. He looks at her distant expression and realizes that none of this has gone the way it was expected to, and chances ruining it all by speaking up, “Nora, talk to me.” 

Her cobalt eyes snap back to him and bring the moment into harsh clarity as he makes out the red-rimmed glassiness of repressed tears. It’s another one of those moments of chilling similarity between her facial expression, brow arched, and his memories of Barbara. The broken whisper that answers him, however, is all Nora, “What have I put you through, Deacon?”

“I don’t think that any of this falls on your shoulders. You can’t exactly be held responsible for the trauma you weren’t aware existed.”

“But it _was_ traumatic?”

“Don’t, Nora. I’ve done this to myself, though you’d have every right to be angry with me. I’m not one to know where the line was, or when I officially crossed it, but after finding you I don’t think I could have stayed away. I’m fairly certain the mystery of it would have kept me close, even if your appearance hadn’t.”

The harshly scratched scribbling of her pencil in the silence seemed to be her voice of disagreement with his given statements. The stalemate only lasted a moment before she bubbled over with restless irritation, pushing the notebook away with a hiss of a sigh. Injured and wasteland-stained hands rub over her face, and her eyes flicked back to him from between her fingers, “Since the very beginning then?”

Caught minorly off-guard, Deacon merely nodded meekly. Nora’s eyes shut as she continued to rub her face, murmuring to the room at large, “How am I so bad at this?”

He doesn’t quite make it to a reply, Nora immediately rolling on to her next point, “I didn’t even notice anything! I mean, you’re a good liar Deacon, but I feel like after _everything_ I should have picked up on _something_ . Instead, I’ve just kept _hitting_ on you and telling myself you were against fraternization or muddying the waters. You’ve always been so nice about it, too.”

Deacon does the unexpected and grabs her hand in his to quiet her before replying, “Some part of me, however terrified, has always been aware we’d have to talk about this, Nora. I couldn’t keep it from you, even though some part of me will always _desperately_ wish that I could.” 

Her calloused hand gripped his back tightly with a squeeze before drawing it away and down into her lap, “Even… even if I had no way of knowing… I’m sorry, Deacon.”

The real quiet of the night settled between the two of them after her apology, not quite uncomfortable but a stifling environment to find the appropriate words in. Reaching for the pack of cigarettes after a few minutes, Nora lights one, offering Deacon another as she speaks, “Would you be willing to let me try something _monstrously_ unethical, in the name of ‘leveling the playing field’? 

It shocks a bark of genuine laughter out of him, “I don’t think ethics have been enforced since long before the Great War. So I’d say shoot.”

She considers this for a moment before standing up again, stretching, and moving back to the duffel bag to rummage once again. This time takes a more substantial search effort, but Nora appears triumphant when a Vault-Tec lunchbox surfaces from being wrapped within a ratty cloth. Inside, Deacon glimpses more personal trophies and tokens of Nora’s, ones that he’s never actually spied his way into viewing. Among them are a few holotapes, and she selectively pulls one out from the middle of a squat stack before tucking the small box of personal items back away. 

After getting everything back into place, she scrambles back up, fiddling with her Pip-Boy to slide the tape in. A beat passes, Nora clicking through the various screens, only to jump after a particular click generates unpleasant feedback momentarily. The shriek of static whines and fades away into a swell of music, only minorly garbled by comparison. Giving a pleasant gasp, she smashes the button to pause it. 

Nora stood up and looked to Deacon finally, an array of emotions crossing her features. Walking back over to the table where he was still nursing a cigarette, she held out her Pip-Boy arm, all but directly asking him to dance. His hand slides back into hers with hardly any pause, but it feel like he just laid down a risky gamble. Moving to stand up, her other hand gently stops him, pushing back against his shoulder.

“So,” she begins a bit quietly, “this was my favorite song before the bombs dropped. I haven’t been able to bring myself to listen to it since the Vault, because it was also the song I danced to at my wedding. It sounds stupid, but it just sounded better when I shared it with Nate. I’d like to hear it again, even if I can only pretend I’m with him. So dance with me. Give me this brief moment of fantasy. Then, we act like it’s possible for us to be ‘even’ in a situation like this, and we call it even.” 

His mouth never opens, so Deacon doesn’t explicitly agree with anything more than his body language. Instead, it’s spoken in how their arms curl around the warmth of the other and the slow frisson of tension that has mounted between them.

Nora manages to click the Pip-Boy into playing with a smooth wrist motion behind his back and Deacon allows the crescendo of music to fill the moment. They sway together in the growing darkness when he realizes with a start that what they’re dancing to is _new_ music, at least to his ears. His grip on her tightens, pulling her closer in his revelation as his heart breaks for the woman in his arms. It might easily have become a favorite song of his own if the memory of it weren’t going to be so strongly colored with Nora’s palpable grief. 

They don’t make it to the end of the recording before she’s dissolved into sobbing. His hold on her tightens again before he lets go and gestures for her to sit on the edge of the bed with him. Nora takes the seat next to him, but it’s a few minutes of silent tears before the grief has passed through her enough that she feels comfortable speaking. 

“Thank you for telling me, Deacon. It feels flimsy, but at least you know I can relate. I think some part of me has been emotionally doing something unnervingly similar, painting parallels between your mannerisms and the memories I have of Nate. I don’t know if that helps or just makes this whole situation worse.”

He isn’t sure when he did it, but Deacon’s arm is wrapped around her shoulder and stroking her arm in a gesture of comfort. He sighs, “I think the only good thing about this situation is that, since we’re the only two in it, we get to decide what’s better and worse.”

Nora’s head leans and drops onto his shoulder to rest as she sighs, “I suppose that’s true. This is a lot of truth, are you sure you’re Deacon?”

The sudden injection of levity breaks the tension back into manageable territory, though Deacon ignores the deliberate and tempting offer for the easy way out. He pulls her closer and leans his head atop hers with only mild discomfort, “Yeah, I’m sure. I think I can make some room in my life for the truth. Especially if we, say, manage to clear away something that’s taking up too much space. Like vengeance against the Institute.”

Nora’s laugh is a benediction of its own, her hand snaking into his own again and squeezing it as she replies, “I think I can manage that.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally. This chapter was much more of a slog than I thought it would be. Still not *thrilled* with it, but I'm not in the mood to start from scratch, or hold up the story any more due to the dialogue in this one. I just needed them to TALK. And I hate that I needed them to talk. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. The final chapter should be wrapped up soon. Thank you for the wonderful feedback and commentary from last time!


	4. Chapter 4

Wake up to the horrors of the Commonwealth, push down the existential dread with a lukewarm Nuka Cola, and get ready to face the day. That was the common practice for Team Death Bunnies, give or take the Nuka Cola. And so it was the next morning when Deacon woke up, Nora’s arms snaked around his torso. Both of them clothed and awake, but reluctant to move from the moment. Their uneasy and unspoken truce was still present in the light of the new day, and it would remain undisturbed until the emotional reserves necessary to bring it up again were found. 

Nora extracted herself first, heeding her ceaseless call of determination, and Deacon allowed himself a moment to watch her before joining the rush. The room, packed and empty in less than ten minutes, was the pact that held their tenuous morning silence in place. They’re back down in the lobby before either trusted themselves to find the right words. Deacon, surprising them both, broke the silence first, “Please take care of yourself, Nora.”

It was tender and full of unspoken promises, but it seemed to be all either of them could bear in the face of such uncertain futures. She smirked as she replied, “You too, Deac.” 

“Always,” he responded as they parted ways at the mouth of the Rexford. Deacon returned her smile, suddenly pulling the unthinkable and sliding his iconic sunglasses down the bridge of his nose, winking at her over the rim. The moment lasts less than five seconds in its totality, but her eyes widen as perceptibly as her smirk does. 

* * *

The boiling pot that the Commonwealth is, things don’t wait long. Instead, within two days it ruptured into damningly violent action on behalf of the Brotherhood of Steel at Mercer safehouse, a raid with little advance warning. Deacon stays so busy ferrying synths to Minutemen settlements and off-grid drops that he ends up hearing that Nora’s done the impossible _after_ the fact. He rolled into headquarters to find Tinker Tom back from Sanctuary, accompanied by their newest recruit- Sturges. 

The stocky synth seems to have made himself at home with the crazed Tinker, and Desdemona only managed to look half-abashed for not including Deacon further. In a world where Nora ran the Minutemen, he could push away most of the swirling doubts about Sturges’ motivations. 

What he finds out after blowing back in, and immediately getting elbow deep, is that Nora had been below ground for a little over six hours. It was a cold bath of reality about her situation, the idea that she might be dead and he would never even know. He took minor comfort with the thought that if the world was cruel enough to put her into his life, it was likely cruel enough to kill her in front of him. It was the only thought that gave him a sense of peace.

Three days of violent retribution around the Commonwealth proper were accompanied by unnerving silence from the bogeymen below. The attitudes around HQ ranged from exhausted to grim, every agent that had the capacity pushing themselves to their limits trying to patch the holes in their threadbare roster. No one had the time to invest in vetting recruits while the fate of their organization hung in the balance.

The first and only word they get of Nora’s success and arrival within the Institute is a message from Patriot that simply reads _111_. It’s a sort of injection of morale, acting as a bastion of hope in the growing uncertainty that has come from borderline open war with the Brotherhood of Steel. By the time the sightings of her in the CIT ruins catch up to Deacon, the entire territory had worked into a frenzy.

When he finally laid eyes on her again, it was with next to no announcement. He wasn’t so dead on his feet that he’d need to validate her existence under normal circumstances. But Nora crawls back into HQ, grimy and tired in the middle of the night, she simply collapses into his bed with little announcement. So rudely awoken, Deacon struggled to diagnose the state of the now unconscious woman beside him, almost forgetting himself in relief as he checked her over.

Singed and exhausted, Nora barely roused from his prodding over her to ensure that she was, in fact, alive and going to stay that way through her nap. As he found out, after coming to terms with her reappearance, Des was aware of her return. Her tone suggested that she knew more than he’d care for about their attachments toward one another, as well. 

Deacon tried to find peace with her in his arms that night. Nora thwarted him by staying asleep less than two hours before marching on to planning with Desdemona herself. The day that followed her announcement of the Brotherhood’s intended attack was mostly a blur. He didn’t process much until after the fireworks across the river had torn down the Prydwen, casting ash and fire along the Charles River. Losing Glory ached in a way that he hated, but the push of action keeps any of them from losing sight of their end goal. 

When everything was all said and done, a span of roughly seventy-two hours is stained grey, white, and red with little room for anything but pure motivation. The maternal drive turned damnation that had taken over the Commonwealth was finally given a physical release. Deacon mourned a bit in private on the bad news he can only assume Nora received in regards to her son, in addition to the ever-growing loss counter that Glory’s death had started. 

The minor earthquake and rumble of the Institute imploding on itself grants a sense of clarity that Deacon hadn’t felt in years. The bogeyman put to rest, there was a sense of celebration that was mildly tempered by collective loss and weariness. However, as always, Deacon was drawn to Nora and the seemingly invisible conflict she remained internally embroiled with. 

The congratulations were offered and negotiations scheduled to be discussed. The cool Boston evening darkening the sky by the time everyone else trickled away. He had to wait through a particularly intensive conversation between Nora and Tinker Tom in hushed tones. Finally, they seemed to come to some form of an accord, and Deacon received a brief wave as Tink collected Sturges and the two made their exit. 

He quietly perched next to Nora, the cool air blowing up off the Commonwealth onto his face as he looked downward. After a few minutes passed, she slid her head so that it rested on his shoulder. They let the silence carry them for a while before Deacon spoke up, “So what’s the encore, Wanderer?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m officially retiring from the Railroad,” she said with little hesitation, turning her head to look at him, “So we can probably leave off the code name.”

He didn’t digest what she said, or the tone that she said it with before she pulled a face and replied, “Sorry, Deacon. That came across ruder than I meant... It’s just been such a day. If you can even call it a day. I don’t exactly remember when I last slept.”

“Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay. Let’s get you to a bed, you’ve had enough action to last a lifetime at this point.”

She nodded, staring off at the CIT crater, now smoking in the dim twilight. He helped her to her feet, each of them leaning on the other as they made a victory shuffle towards Goodneighbor. 

* * *

He doesn’t find out the full stretch of events until two hazy days later, once both of them have risen from a coma-like sleep and done a full round of first aid recuperation. Nora called together Hancock and MacCready and made an unofficial reservation for the private room at the Third Rail. The scope of what exactly the Institute was, topped by the fact that _her son_ was the one running it all, left her meager crowd speechless. Somehow, likely due to Hancock, Whitechapel Charlie filled the silence left by introducing a round of drinks on the house. 

At some point she ends up divulging the other major puzzle piece, her conversation with Tinker Tom, to them as well, “There is an... aspect of my son that lives on. They had begun to experiment with Synth children, awful as that is. Shaun had found it only fitting to offer himself as the trial run. That’s where the footage we got from Kellogg came in, Mac.”

It’s not an answer any of them could have expected. MacCready let out a small huff, “Geez, boss. That’s awful. I can’t even imagine if… Well, yeah, that’s a lot to handle. So where is he?”

Nora’s grimace while taking a swig isn’t exactly an answer, but it did illuminate her difficulty with the situation. She sighed, “I’ve set aside Spectacle Island as a synth-majority settlement. I’ve sent him there, alongside the _two_ synth versions of myself that were repurposed that I found in the Institute. He’ll have a mother, or two, but I don’t think that I can bring myself to be around him. I’m not sure yet, it’s a lot to try and process.” 

MacCready just nodded dumbly, as though that was any kind of answer to respond with. They were in mixed company though, so Deacon holds his tongue, for her sake. Picking fights with her friends over their replies wouldn’t win him any favors. 

They end up staying holed up in the bar for almost twelve hours, the gathering filling the role of a celebration and a funeral all-in-one. Though none of them get well and truly drunk until around hour ten. Respect for what had transpired stilled overeager hands unless Nora was drinking too. Deacon stayed close enough to sober, keeping an eye on her flock of idiots, but by the time they emerged back into the wasteland air, even he stumbles a bit. 

Hancock and Mac are drunkenly deposited with a deeply resentful Fahrenheit, while Nora and Deacon make slow progress towards the Rexford. His heart leapt into overdrive as she leaned against him and curled her hand into his own. When he looked down at her, she gave a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes, “Ready to talk about that encore, partner?”

He squeezed her hand, “Whenever you are, Nora.”

She nodded but didn’t speak up again until they made their way up to their rooms. Deacon moved to go into his, unassumingly across the hall from hers, but her grip on his hand suddenly acted like a vice. He glanced over at her questioningly, but her face had become one of turmoil. Concern spiked through him, but she started talking before he could inquire, “I didn’t get it before. I’m sorry.”

“Whoa, Nora, what?”

She turned to face him, “I didn’t get it, Deacon. I look just like Barbara, you told me that, but I didn’t _get it_. Until I saw them. Saw _him_.”

Deacon wasn’t sure if Nora realized it, but she was crying. It seemed like a quiet rage running through her, her skin pale and her body quivering as tears streamed down her face. He took a beat to cup her face and wipe away the tears as gently as he could, struggling to jimmy her door open behind him and usher her in. Unconsciously he whispered brief comforts under his breath, hushing the steady stream of grief pouring out from her the best he could. 

They landed on the bed, sitting with an unceremonious plop, Nora still shaking with an outburst of emotion that Deacon had to assume was festering under the surface. He stayed there, arms wrapped around her, for almost half an hour before Nora was back to a place where she could speak clearly. Unceremoniously, she used the crumpled and dirty sheets to wipe her face off, glassy-eyed as she cleared her throat out to try again, “There was a synth replica of Nate…”

“Oh…,” he heard himself reply, suddenly all of her bottled grief and dismay clicking into place, “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Nora.”

She scowled mildly at him, “You go through it with me every damn day, Deacon! That’s what I was trying to say. You shouldn’t be apologizing, I’m trying to.”

Deacon smiled back good-naturedly, “Nora, I appreciate what it is you’re trying to do here. But yours is much fresher grief than my own, and of a different caliber given the circumstances. By now you are far more to me than a ghost of Barbara. At my worst, you’re sometimes what I imagine she would’ve aspired to be. I’m better for having met you, regardless of the reminders you initially brought.”

Nora wiped at her face again, avoiding eye contact with him as he stroked her hair and spoke. It was quiet for a minute before she replied, “It was hard to see him, harder still to know that he was a prisoner to Shaun’s family whims. But seeing him, having that illusion of what _had_ been thrown in my face, only made me realize what I wanted from my life now. I don’t want to live in the past and pretend none of this has happened to me”

Deacon felt his throat grow tight, his voice a whisper, “And what do you want?”

She gazed back at him through her eyelashes, “I… I want to help people like my son had been too afraid to. I want to be strong enough one day to visit the synthetic ghosts of my past, exiled away on an island to a blissfully ignorant life. I want to live in the here and now, regardless of how poor the interior decor. But, first and foremost Deacon, I found that all I really wanted... was you.”

He took her hand, grasping anxiously at the hem of the sheet, and wrapped it in one of his own, “This is probably so not the right time for this, given everything that you’ve been through this past week. But I’ll be damned if I turn down an opportunity like this, Nora. I love you. I have been in love with you since the night in Bunker Hill. You’ve made me into a man of more than vigilante justice and lies and made me unafraid of being known by someone for who I am. So long as that someone is you.”

Nora’s hand disentangles itself from his for a heart-wrenching moment, her body tilting towards him as he braces for rejection and misunderstanding. But instead, she grasped his glasses by either side and pulled them down and then off, gently. Her right hand lingered to stroke at the stubble of his chin, nudging him into making eye contact with her, “I love you too, Deacon.”

She pushed gently upward, initiating a kiss, her lips soft and carnal against his own. Deacon finally managing to mentally play catch up with the situation, leaned into her with his own fervor. His heart sputtered wildly in his chest, all heat and passion coursing through him as he tangled his fingers through her hair and pressed her to himself. They find themselves panting, unaware of how much time had passed when they finally break apart from one another. 

* * *

“So you’re sure that the first thing you want to do as an official member of the Minutemen is to start a brand new settlement?”

“Why not? You do shit like this all the time. Besides, it’s not _new_ new. I just want to make sure when you put University Point back on the map, you do it right. It used to be a hell of a fishing spot.”

“Alright then. If you think you’re up to the task. Let’s go make a fish camp.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's done! Corny, and likely out of character, but done. 
> 
> This is the first multi-chapter fic I have written and finished in a very, very long time and I'm deeply excited. I hope you enjoyed it! I'm very thankful for the wonderful comments and feedback that I've received while working on this, so I'd like to thank everyone who's commented and left kudos. Feel free to comment below, or message me on Tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/inscripsi. 
> 
> Also, apologies for those who may have been excited from the tags, there is no smut this fic around, I struggled a lot with the pacing for this chapter and it didn't fit in well emotionally. However, I may take the scraps of my drafts and include a smutty one-shot for these two later. If you're interested, let me know.


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